U.S. Pat. No. 4,625,633 in the name of Martin, is a commonly owned Patent which describes a ventilated core unit for service connections useful in work station arrays. Various prior art patents are disclosed in the Martin Patent. The disclosure of all of those patents may be summarized by a statement in the Martin Patent that none of the prior art discloses the benefits of an independently controlled zone unit that is not attached to building HVAC equipment by air ducts.
Martin correctly identifies a modern trend in office furniture and layout arrangements in which small semi-private working cubical are created about a central core with multiple work stations and equipment emitting from that core. The Martin design has been very successful in providing a central core unit which accomplishes both ventilating and utility connections for peripheral work spaces.
The principal basis upon which the Martin invention is founded is the use of a central core unit for local ventilating, where the core unit also provides utility connections to peripheral work spaces around the core. A work space fan is mounted in a side wall of the cabinet. That fan is operable under user control to draw air from the work space into the plenum defined by the walls of the cabinet. The wall is then discharged to the common area directly above the work space.
No system is perfect, however, and several drawbacks have been encountered in the use of the Martin system. Most of those drawbacks have been solved by the air circulation system described in commonly owned Mitchell et al U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,668. For the first time, it has been possible to obtain a class 100,000 rating for an office space, which result is highly desirable for health reasons as well as for insurance ratings. The system comprises the construction of a core having an inlet which draws in ambient air and an outlet which exhaust air such that the air flow combines with side walls of a work station to enclose an individual in a work station in an envelope of processed air. Most newly installed work spaces can take advantage of the Mitchell et al air circulation system to produce a plurality of work stations of optimum air quality and to improve air quality in the entire room.
The Mitchell et al system requires the construction of a central core of at least sufficient size to process the air through the inlet and outlet. New construction of work stations is improved by the Mitchell et al design giving a better alignment of work space for a given quantity of available space. However, many work station presently exist and would be suitable for continued use if the quality of the environment surrounding the work station could be improved. These existing work station typical converge upon a central point rather then on a central core. These existing work stations may be visualized as being two or more walls which intersect each other to define work station which are separated by a portion of each wall.
It is an object of this invention to provide a device which would significantly improve the environment of these work station without requiring major modification or replacement of the existing walls.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a device which is useful with existing work station arrays to provide an envelope of clean air for at least one individual work station.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a device which is suitable for maintaining air quality and air temperature at desirable levels while using as much of existing work station arrays as possible.
Other objects will appear hereinafter.